ALAMOGORDO – Alamogordo City Commissioners approved the use of funds to undertake a necessary round of testing for the Brackish Water Treatment Facility (BWTF) at their regular commission meeting Dec. 4.

The $20,250 change order approved will go toward contractor CDM Smith’s engineers to conduct an operational readiness test (ORT), which is one of four phases of testing that must be undertaken before the plant is fully operational, City Engineering Manager Bob Johnson said.

The testing will examine wiring, instrument calibration, and the monitoring of other system components.

“The operational readiness testing is done to verify everything is order and is as designed and will function as intended,” Johnson said.

The BWTF, located on LaVelle Road, will treat brackish groundwater that is too salty for consumption. The facility will treat groundwater piped 26 miles from the north of Tularosa, Johnson said.

“It’s capable of treating and producing a million gallons a day of treated drinking water,” he said.

The money used to fund the testing was not a new expense but rather a procedural approval of the use of funds already budgeted for the facility, Johnson said.

The plant will hopefully be operational by early spring, Johnson said.

“It’s hard to take an educated guess at this point because we’ve got so many moving parts and pieces to this and we’ve had a number of issues come up that are not the City’s fault or the contractors’ fault,” he said. “The best guess is the latter half of January or possibly February before this thing will be fully operational.”

The ORT requires the engineers who built the facility come back to test it, Johnson said.

“They’re the ones that designed it, so they need to ensure that nothing was built improperly. It’s an extra level of quality control that we want. It’s better to have them look at it than not,” he said.

Further rounds of testing and will similarly require Commissioners approval of a change order.

Next will be functional demonstration testing, which will be done at the facility with its equipment operating at a reduced capacity, Johnson said, and then a site acceptance testing, which will be done shortly before the plant opens and will test the equipment at full operational capacity.

Buy Photo

City Engineering Manager Bob Johnson told Commissioners that the brackish water plant will treat a million gallons of water per day.(Photo: Dylan Taylor-Lehman/Daily News)

The BWTF will augment the capabilities of Alamogordo’s two existing water treatment plants by tapping into an alternate water source, Johnson said. The BWTF will primarily be used in May through September, when local water usage is the highest, he said.

According to the City of Alamogordo’s 40-Year Water Development Plan, more than seventy percent of the City of Alamogordo’s water supply is derived from surface water that is affected by drought.

Adequate surface water is not available to meet increasing City of Alamogordo’s demands, hence the necessity of a facility that can treat groundwater, which is not as susceptible to drought conditions, the report states.

The BWTF project began around 20 years ago and will cost approximately $30 million, half of which will have been paid for with grants. City Commissioners approved a $9.5 million contract in 2017 to complete the facility.